S.D. Lawmaker Posts Diatribe Against Gay Sex

Some of his wording: 'a one-way alley meant only for the garbage truck to go down.'

BY Trudy Ring

May 03 2014 5:00 AM ET

Rep. Steve Hickey

With South Dakota about to face a lawsuit challenging its ban on same-sex marriage, a state legislator has posted an anti-LGBT rant on Facebook, calling gay sex, particularly anal sex, a health hazard, and making familiar arguments against equal-access policies for transgender people.

“Certainly there are board-certified doctors in our state who will attest to what seems self-evident to so many: gay sex is not good for the body or mind,” Rep. Steve Hickey wrote on Facebook earlier this week. “Pardon a crude comparison but regarding men with men, we are talking about a one-way alley meant only for the garbage truck to go down.”

Hickey goes on to say, “It seems self-evident the list of side effects would read far longer than anything we hear on a Cialis commercial.”

He also denounces school policies to accommodate transgender students, something he says the South Dakota High School Activities Association is considering. He notes the high rate of suicide among transgender young people, but says, “Letting boys play girl sports is not the starting place to fix the suicide problem or the very real daily struggle these students face dealing with something they have been handed in life. … Does it merely put them in more places exposing them to additional painful ostracization all the while transferring serious anxieties to other innocent and impressionable ones in those locker rooms?”

His post ends, “Before we let lawyers and judges decide this for our state and override the will of the people in the 2006 election, I issue a call to the medical and psychological communities and associations to weigh in publicly and timely on the matter of homosexuality and the human body, psyche and family, particular kids.”

Hickey, a Republican and pastor of the Church at the Gate, a fundamentalist Christian church in Sioux Falls, submitted his diatribe as a letter to the Sioux Falls Argus Leader newspaper as well as posting it on Facebook, but said he doubted the paper would print it. In an article in the paper Friday, Argus Leader executive editor Maricarrol Kueter said the letter didn’t meet the publication’s length and language standards and that she had asked Hickey to submit a new version, which she had not yet received.

Meanwhile, Hickey has received ample media attention and a variety of reactions. He “is being mocked, criticized and praised,” the Argus Leader reported Friday. Some have pointed out the lack of scientific support for his claims, and the South Dakota Democratic Party has called his post “hateful” and “reprehensible.” Hickey told the Argus Leader he’s received threats of rape. “I’m having people describe how they want to rape me and hurt me,” he said. “It’s a really dark underculture.” He also said he stands by the post and that doctors who disagree with him must be “intimidated.”